A possible food festival, revival of the annual sidewalk sale and a business recruitment venture are in the works.

BERGENFIELD — Local merchants are breathing new life into the borough's downtown, with plans for a possible food festival, revival of the annual sidewalk sale and a recruitment venture aimed at making it easier to open a business.

Funds for those projects and more are incorporated in a spending plan of $187,000 that was recently approved by the Borough Council – the first budget the Special Improvement District, a public-private partnership created to improve the local business climate, has had in more than a year.

“We’re very excited and very optimistic to work with the borough to deliver what we always intended downtown to be,” said the SID's executive director, Stuart Koperweis.

Leaders of the SID, which was established in 1997, presented a $192,000 budget to the council last year. But questions of conflict arose when some council members felt they may have to recuse themselves from voting on the budget, either because they rent downtown properties or because they were associated with someone who did business for the SID.

If the council members had recused themselves, the budget would not have received enough votes to pass. Borough Attorney John Schettino recommended that the rarely applied “doctrine of necessity” be invoked, so that conflicted council members could vote.

The SID budget was approved on March 21 by a vote of 4-2, with council members Ora Kornbluth and Thomas Lodato dissenting.

The budget is supported by $162,000 in taxes assessed to downtown property owners. The remaining $25,000 is surplus left over from 2015, the last year the SID was active.

It includes $67,000 for capital improvements, $50,000 for marketing and special events, $43,000 for economic development and $27,000 for administration.

“The idea would be to streamline the process,” O’Reilly said. “This would allow pop-up businesses to come in and close after the season. It’s a long, drawn-out process for these people.”

O’Reilly estimated the vacancy rate of downtown storefronts to be about 10 percent. He cited a particular business – a tattoo parlor – that needed more than a year to get up and running in one of those empty stores.

“That’s just too long,” O’Reilly said. “We’re reviewing the inspection process to see how we can make it easier.”

A man jogs past the local movie theater.(Photo11: Mitsu Yasukawa/NorthJersey.com)

O’Reilly said it was too early to say whether the SID would continue to host classic car shows, which were a summertime staple for years.

But Koperweis, who is also executive director of the Business District Alliance of Fort Lee, said the SID is planning an event that would be a “shot in the arm” for shop owners.

Customers would get stamped on something like a bingo card when they visit each downtown business. The more stamps they collect, he said, the more prizes they would be eligible to receive.

Asked if the SID board feels added pressure to produce results this year, O’Reilly said, “Any time you’re given public money, that pressure is there to make sure it’s well-spent. I think we’ve had ‘make it, or break it’ years before, but now, I think, there’s a better understanding of what SID is capable of. We can’t wave a magic wand and turn downtown Bergenfield into what it was in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.”

Mayor Norman Schmelz said approval of the SID's budget is a “win for all taxpayers” because, without the SID, residents would have to foot the bill for holiday decorations and lamppost pennants, among other things.

“We would’ve passed that burden onto them,” the mayor said. “Downtowns aren’t anything like they used to be, but we’re making ours as aesthetic as possible to attract new businesses.”